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POWs lay wreaths in Thailand

Ron Corben

Under a jungle canopy in the dawn light some 1200 people, including three Australian former prisoners of war, now in their 90s, marked Anzac Day at the Konyu Cutting along the Death Railway in Western Thailand.

Former Australian POWs from Western Australia, Harold Martin and Milton Fairclough, who both worked on the railway, laid a wreath at the memorial, the crowd applauding in respect. Also attending was Neil MacPherson, who had worked on the Konyu Cutting section of the infamous 415 kilometre rail line.

The Konyu Cutting, known as Hell Fire Pass, now a memorial with a museum, was one of many excavations along the railway construction from 1942 to 1943.

The year 1943 was a key military objective by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.

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But building the line came at great cost, claiming the lives of 12,400 POWs, including 2800 Australians from a total POW conscripted workforce of 60,000. Many were brought from Singapore after its fall to the Japanese as well as Dutch from Indonesia.

The railway also claimed the lives of 90,000 Asian labourers from a workforce of 200,000, who largely perished from dysentery, malnutrition and disease.

New Zealand Ambassador to Thailand, Tony Lynch, in an address, told how the tranquillity of the cutting today masked a darker era.

"I cannot even try to evoke in words what it much have been like here in 1942 and 1943. But it is said that Hell Fire Pass once looked and was a living image of Hell itself," Lynch said.

"Only those here at that time can truly know and understand the extremes of human emotion and the challenges of the human condition once witnessed in this place," he said.

The family of former POW Alan Moss, from Melbourne, who worked on the line, have made their pilgrimage to where their father was held.

Elizabeth Moss said the family had come to appreciate "what an amazing man he was" as he coped with life after the war and raised a family. "He did not teach us to hate the Japanese at all - quite the opposite," Ms Moss told AAP.

Jennifer Bannon-Moss said her father was a "hero in the true sense of the word - I reckon. A top bloke. We always knew that, but this (visiting the locations where he was held) makes us realise what he endured and spared us from because he just didn't wear it, carry it as baggage. He just wanted the best for us and the kids in the future," she said.

After the dawn service, a further wreath laying ceremony was held at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery where lies the gravestones of 7000 men - 1362 of which are Australian.